Probably many reasonable people are also incredulous at the idea Obamacare worked, because the pundit class and the beltway media joined the conservative bubble in trumpeting everything that went wrong, except the Medicaid gap; they were happy to ignore that. Reasonable people, however, will eventually figure out there wasn’t a disaster (hopefully before election day). Conservatives are off in full-throated denial after their media and politicians spent years telling them Obamacare is a disaster, already failed, lost in a death spiral, blah de blah — and now turns out Obamacare failed to fail. Even Healthcare.gov works now. Bad enough the predictions of failure were wrong, but conservative media often announced it had failed, and how can anybody be so stupid as to not see that? So the numbers must be all fake!

Yeah, um, about that. Let’s see if I can help any conservatives browsing by (let’s play concern troll!), and who buy the notion that Obama’s numbers are so fake you’d think he was trying to sell an invasion of Iraq. How can you tell if the numbers are real? Regarding the Census Bureau changing some questions, you could send a journalist to actually ask them for details. Granted, that would require having some journalists, so that’s a tough one for conservatives. Still, then you could find out they’ve been working on these revisions since before Obamacare and testing for a few years, so comparisons will be apples to apples. Nothing hidden there.

Also, there are outside sources of information, so no having to take Dick Cheney’s word for it that Saddam and Osama are best buddies and no, you can’t see any intelligence but the few bits we cherrypicked for you. Gallup is doing its own surveys, insurers collect their own information, and no doubt public health researchers will be conducting their surveys. No need to simply trust the government’s claims.

And of course, like is often the case with conspiracy theories, for this to be a conspiracy, loads of people need to be in on the plot, and able to keep quiet about it. None of that huge number can blow the whistle, be overheard by the wrong person, leave memos or data laying around. Ever. If you believe that can be the case, you’re pretty much the definition of someone who would believe anything (provided it was unprovable).

“Trutherism” might be a bit strong on MNSure. I suppose that’s really just a talking point that’s dishonest or grossly uninformed, your mileage might vary. Specifically of course I’m referring to the “bailout” claim, that the state bailed out MNSure. The linked MPR article explained what happened with MNSure’s shortfall that supposedly required a bailout. Briefly, premiums were lower than expected (generally a good thing, unless you’re a Republican candidate determined to complain about anything), which resulted in lower federal matching funds, so MNSure’s funding ran short. The shortfall was made up by transferring some costs from the MNSure fund to the general treasury. If you believe that’s a bailout, then you must think you can bailout yourself, which most of us actually refer to as “the opposite of a bailout”. This is like paying for your purchase by digging into your pocket and coming up short, so you get a “bailout” in the form of digging into your other pocket for the rest of the money. “Hey look, my pants pocket received a bailout — from my jacket pocket! Oh no, I’m about to become a MNGOP talking point!”